Paramount Theatre

Friday, December 8 John Cale was the classical side of the Velvet Underground, who laid groundwork for every generation of rock & roll since the late Sixties. In almost every musical capacity -- from A&R at Warner Bros., to producer for Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, and Jonathan Richman, to collaborative efforts with Brian Eno, Lou Reed, and Hector Zazou -- Cale has built a body of work staggering in scope and complexity, and which came full circle with a Velvet Underground Reunion in 1994. With melodic Welsh tones, Cale responded to a kind of 20 Questions format with studied responses about music and animated ones when touching on his passions.

Austin Chronicle: What did you do today?

John Cale: Just finished doing music for [the film] I Shot Andy Warhol.

AC: I Shot Andy Warhol with Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling? Are the Velvets recreated?

JC: Yes, Dorff is great in it! Lili Taylor is magnificent as Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy. Yo La Tengo, I think, is playing the band. I went to the set they built for The Factory. It was so real it was chilling. So I left.

AC: There's so much focus on the Reed/Cale rivalry in the Velvets.

JC: Well, everyone loves a dysfunctional family. We were the Roseanne of rock & roll. The recidivist rate was no better in [the Velvets] than any other group, but that's one side of it. [Problems between me and Reed] became the dominant aspect. Never should have gone that far. We should have been able to handle them.

AC: This press release calls you a "sonic madman" [guffaws from both ends]. Do you deliberately cultivate an enigmatic image?

JC: Am I enigmatic? Mmm. If you're writing on a lot of topics that are important to me, that's not really going to make it simple for people, is it? They'd rather pin you down.

AC: What are you reading these days?

JC: Chinese press reports off the Net, looking at crime in China. Do you know what kind of crimes are committed there? Mostly economic ones, ripoffs.

AC: What's your current musical line-up?

JC: I have an amplified string quartet, steel and piano.

AC: Those Velvet songs must sound interesting.

JC: It sounds pretty fierce but it's really a nice musical evening; they can play classical style but they can also make a hell of a racket with them. I like that. -- Margaret Moser